Montgomery County groups spar over tea party label

Duane Ham, president of the Texas Conservative Tea Party Coalition, speaks at a recent fundraiser for the newly formed group in Montgomery County. His group has drawn the ire of an older established tea party organization in the county, the Texas Patriots PAC, for helping establishment candidates win a May 27 GOP primary runoff. Photo courtesy of Melanie Thibodeaux, the coalitionâs publicity consultant. less

Duane Ham, president of the Texas Conservative Tea Party Coalition, speaks at a recent fundraiser for the newly formed group in Montgomery County. His group has drawn the ire of an older established tea party ... more

Photo: Texas Conservative Tea Party Coa

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Duane Ham says the Texas Conservative Tea Party Coalition is a voice for conservatives disenfranchised by the far right.

Duane Ham says the Texas Conservative Tea Party Coalition is a voice for conservatives disenfranchised by the far right.

Photo: Courtesy Of TCTPC

Montgomery County groups spar over tea party label

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In possibly the reddest, most conservative county in Texas, voters recently were greeted by paid campaign workers sporting fire-red shirts touting their tea party allegiance. Emblazoned across the backs of their shirts were the words "Texas Patriot."

But these workers were not representing the Texas Patriots PAC, the tea party group that has been a force in Montgomery County politics for five years and whose workers also wear red shirts. They were backing a county candidates slate endorsed by the upstart Texas Conservative Tea Party Coalition, which helped catapult to victory several establishment contenders who were vehemently opposed by the Texas Patriots.

Now some veterans of the original tea party movement are crying foul. Texas Patriots president Julie Turner calls the coalition a "fake" tea party that has hijacked the grass-roots movement's label to deceive and confuse voters.

Coalition president Duane Ham dismissed critics in the Texas Patriots as "whiners," adding that they just "need to take their ball and go home." He said he founded the coalition - whose board members and financial backers he declined to identify - with the help of a well-known Republican operative and lobbyist in Austin, Todd M. Smith, to provide a "fresh voice" for conservatives who have felt disenfranchised by the far right.

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'How did you do it?'

At a time when the tea party movement continues to shake up the political order, as it did this past week with the GOP primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Virginia, political analysts said they aren't surprised to see increasing numbers of conservative candidates and groups claim to be affiliated with the tea party movement.

"A lot of political entrepreneurs will want to adopt the (tea party) label," said John Henson, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "The average voter is looking for a shorthand label for who's the most conservative."

Ham believes that his group's success in the May 27 runoff election in Montgomery County, a conservative bastion that hasn't elected a Democrat to local office in 20 years, may provide a road map for electing conservative candidates with governing experience or who have been shunned by their local tea party group. He said the coalition plans to take the experiment statewide.

"We've had calls from across the country, asking 'How did you do it?' " Ham said. "People are watching Montgomery County. As we see it, there's still free speech and nobody has a copyright on the tea party trademark."

According to Henson, polls consistently show 70 percent of the state's Republican voters like how influential the tea party movement has become. Experts say this has turned the tea party label into a hot commodity.

But the tea party is a movement - not an organization with structure like the Republican Party. So it has no control over who claims its name, and political observers think dueling tea parties could be the future battleground between traditional Republicans and anti-establishment outsiders.

Another 'fake' accusation

The coalition is not the only Texas tea party group accused of being "fake" during the May 27 primary campaign. The United Tea Party of Texas sent out a slick mailer to thousands of Texas voters that championed Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst over his challenger, tea party favorite and state Sen. Dan Patrick. Critics noted that this group was not registered with the state and nobody had ever heard of it until then.

Dale Huls, director of the Clear Lake Tea Party - one of a few tea party groups to endorse Dewhurst - dismissed the effort as a "masquerade." Huls said a California fundraiser, using money from an unidentified donor, had asked his group to endorse the mailer but his group declined. However, Hul allowed the use of his family's post office box for the mailer's return address.

"They needed a Texas address, and they'd given me the names of two other known tea party groups backing the mailer. But when confronted after it all blew up, the fundraiser told me I'd misunderstood - that he'd only said 'may' support it. So there never really were any groups behind it," Huls said. "I learned a big lesson."

A United Tea Party representative couldn't be reached for comment.

As for the Montgomery County group, Ham denied trying to hoodwink voters. He also said he wasn't trying to dress his workers like the Texas Patriots, saying red is the Republican color and everyone has the right to call themselves a patriot.

Yet two weeks after the coalition helped three of five Commissioners Court candidates to victory, the question of who is behind the organization is a mystery.

Ham said his organization has six board members, but he has declined to disclose their names.

"I don't want them to be harassed and smeared like I am," he explained.

Smith, the Austin lobbyist who teamed up with Ham, said he isn't a Montgomery County voter and wasn't active in that election but is gearing up for a statewide push in November: "This is just the first place where we decided to declare war. We're looking for office space now."

Voters of this county northwest of Houston had already seen some splintering of tea party groups, such as when a faction of the established Texas Patriots PAC broke away earlier this year and became the Montgomery County Tea Party. But even the Montgomery County Tea Party's website calls the new coalition "fake."

The coalition maintains it's just another grass-roots organization in the tea party movement.

Angry with Texas Patriots

Ham, a 43-year-old trucking and construction company owner, said he decided to form the coalition after losing his Republican primary bid for state representative earlier this year, before the runoffs. He was angry with the Texas Patriots, not only for not endorsing him, but for not even interviewing him. He said others were treated the same way, especially if they had previous experience in elective office.

The Texas Patriots also never interviewed Precinct 2 Commissioner Craig Doyal, who, with the coalition's backing, went on to win the GOP nomination for county judge. No Democrats filed for county judge or commissioner seats.

However, critics say the coalition's operations are too secretive.

Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit group tracking Texas political fundraising, believes the coalition has violated state regulations by failing to file a financial report for the May runoff.

"Some groups try to flout this law," said the group's spokesman, Craig McDonald. "But the public has a right to know who supports them."

He added that he sees more and more groups springing up in Texas without any grass-roots base: "They're just a checkbook and not much more."

Natalia Ashley, spokeswoman for the Texas Ethics Commission, said runoff financial reports were due May 19, but she cannot say whether the coalition is in violation. The ethics board must decide that, she said.

State law requires political committees that accept contributions or make expenditures in a runoff to file a financial report with the ethics commission if their expenditures in support of a "group of candidates" exceed $15,000.

Ham contended that his group is exempt from filing because it never joined any specific candidate's campaign, but "if we're wrong then we'll correct it with our planned filing in July." He estimated his group has spent about $45,000 on mailers, radio ads and poll workers. About $25,000 of that was a loan from an unidentified benefactor that he guaranteed; the rest came from individual donors, including $1,500 from Doyal.

Bill O'Sullivan, the Texas Patriots' treasurer, grudgingly credited the coalition with pulling off a coup. "But they are distorting the tea party movement, and that doesn't sit right with me," he said. "We have members and hold meetings."

Quarterly rallies

Ham said people are joining his coalition through his website, and he will be holding quarterly rallies. He noted that Doyal and one other Commissioners Court candidate came in second place in the March GOP primary behind the Texas Patriots-backed candidates, but then later won the runoff with his coalition's support.

"I don't think voters were confused. They come in knowing who they want in a runoff," said Doyal, noting that he had trailed his opponent, Mark Bosma, by only 95 votes in the primary. He wound up winning the runoff by more than 3,000 votes.

But Bosma, the county infrastructure director who was backed by the Texas Patriots, feels voters were "absolutely confused" by the competing tea parties.

The competition between these groups became so heated, according to Montgomery County Republican Chairman Dr. Wally Wilkerson, that constables had to be called to settle squabbles at a number of polling stations.

"But nobody," he said, "has a monopoly on who can call themselves a tea party."